Wait, a debut fan?
Ihwa hesitated, then went into the official fan café and searched a single nickname.
“Hyeonbaragi.”
Seeing that posts had gone up even recently, it looked like they still liked Cheonghyeon.
So Ihwa impulsively sent a message. Of course, she had absolutely no intention of making a poor graduate student pay. She simply wanted to do the first support together with someone who had watched Cheonghyeon for a long time.
If that could be called territorial, she could not deny it. Still, if she was going to spend money, she wanted to do it together with Hyeonbaragi or else do it entirely on her own. She could make up the lack of funds by selling proxy photos…
Her camera held a trove of legendary shots of various idols.
“Proxy shooting” meant selling the photos you had taken of an idol’s schedules like this to the fans of that group.
There were quite a few reporters who made pocket money by shooting schedules that were hard for fans to attend and selling the photos to homemasters.
Most would put out B-cuts as the article photos and sell the really good cuts to the homemasters.
Homemasters also preferred to buy the raws and do the retouching rather than lug heavy cameras and chase schedules. Especially for local events, it was hard to follow every single one no matter how much you loved them.
Also, even if it was a schedule that was hard for fans to attend, if you skipped even one you would get nitpicky questions like, “Are you sure you still like ○○? lol,” so it was a win-win for everyone.
And since Ihwa was very good at photography, as the end of the year approached she often got contacted by homemasters she had traded with. They would say they needed photos for season’s greetings.
“I was going to sell these, add a bit to my savings, and replace my laptop… but I do have the company laptop for now… ugh.”
She forcibly ignored the A-brand laptop tugging at her eyes and was about to contact a lunchbox company when a suspicious account with no seal and an ID that looked freshly made slid into her DMs.
[Hello. This is Hyeonbaragi.]
“What… what is all this…”
Ihwa stared blankly at the shopping bags that filled her two-room apartment.
So the price of these three little boxes is the same as my studio deposit…?
She had never seen a watch like this in her life and did not even dare open it. The smallest of them still radiated such presence it looked worth at least five years of her salary.
As she gingerly took a step back, a catalog neatly listing the purchases slipped down beside the shopping bags.
If you buy this much, the department store even organizes what you bought and sends it to you.
Well, if even one thing went missing here, it would be a disaster.
Flipping through the catalog, she found the items lined up cleanly by brand. Rummaging among the gifts, she also found a catalog sent by another department store.
How much is all of this even…?
The cheapest thing here was a T-shirt that cost 1.37 million won. One point three seven million won? Is that really a price you put on a T-shirt?
She had never once in her life spent more than 100,000 won on a T-shirt. T-shirts were, by nature, something you bought cheap, wore for one summer, and tossed.
And when she was in her twenties, Ihwa wore a coat for two years that cost the same as that T-shirt with a zero knocked off. How unfair could this be.
She remembered that Hyeonbaragi had said that small items would be delivered together later and that she could leave those off the list.
Small, he said. She had wondered if he was sending a hand-knit scarf or something… These filthy bourgeois types.
Then Ihwa snapped back to herself.
This was no time to stand around stunned.
She hurriedly opened Photoshop, then phoned a wrapping service to arrange pickup. Now those gifts would be neatly wrapped and sent to the agency.
Honestly, if she had money to burn, she wanted to shower Cheonghyeon with gifts without limit. He was the first idol she had ever liked, and she had watched by his side as he went through the bitter years of obscurity. She had been slowly compromising with reality, but seeing the gifts piled up like this rekindled her drive. With a patron bankrolling it, she would make this support more grand than any other idol’s.
[ GIDIAN X HYEONbaragi 1st SUPPORT ]
- Guys wait a sec! Look, Gigi siblings joint support omg
└ Link (http://txitxer.com/GIDIAN/status)
└ Hul
└ Wow…
└ Heomi
- So funny, look how everyone is dazed under the Gigi siblings’ support post, but I am dazed too…
└ What are the Gigi siblings??
└ Gidian X Hyeonbaragi!! Fans are taking the first of one and the last of the other to call them that
└ Is that a famous home for Cheonghyeon??
└ The first is a homemaster, the second is a writer? A name in the fandom? Anyway, both are some of the few debut fans of Cheonghyeon, so they are kind of symbolic lol
Hyeon-gae @hyunpuppy: Guys,,, am I even allowed to be on a board this cool? Huh? I feel like I just walked around a department store twelve times in a dream…
Yeonsan’gun @kingjot: As expected, the Gigi siblings are quietly strong…
└ Hyeon-gae @hyunpuppy: Sangun, is this what you call quietly strong? We are literally screaming after seeing the item list
└ Yeonsan’gun @kingjot: Please…
[AKA Ko Yeonhee Gallery] The in-laws’ trousseau at this hour.jpg
└ Is this real? I scroll and scroll and it never ends
ㅇㅇ(175.223) Our Yeonhee is marrying into a family that will not make her suffer
ㅇㅇ(223.32) Wait, was this a program that marries them off, not a dating show
ㅇㅇ(110.70) So the man’s side brought the house, is that it?
ㅇㅇ(211.36) But this is not an official support, it is a lunchbox support lol. I heard supports are banned over there so they shoved the gifts in with the lunchboxes
ㅇㅇ(175.223) Behold the four great department stores of Korea… and with that, a side of lunchboxes
- Am I the only one who got choked up reading the Gigi siblings’ support post??
└ For real… it kind of feels like both of them are grinding their teeth and going all out, moved by the long frustration of CH not rising compared to other members and by finally getting this long-awaited crumb…
└ Truly ㅠ… If not now, who knows when the next chance will come
└ East does not even have an album plan this year… every single broadcast appearance is precious ㅠㅠ
- The fact that it is the first support is also really symbolic… If you think about why supports were banned for East in the first place… yeah
└ Right ㅠ I went salmoning to dig up info after I fell in, and I saw a ton of posts blaming CH, saying supports were banned because only CH was not getting supports
└ Huh?? Seriously???? They say that outright?? What is even going on with the fandom vibe;;
└ It is only a few posts, but looking at posts from back then, they mostly blamed the Cheong kids ㅠㅠ The Gigi siblings must be just mad as heck and grinding their teeth to prepare this… yeah yeah
- But is a support on this scale even possible???
└ I am roughly estimating and it is over 500 million won at least. There is even a diamond set in a ring ㄷㄷㄷ Is this even possible…?
└ For real, at this scale the tax office might launch an investigation
└ And the name of this support is… lunchbox support, is that correct?
Watching the Internet explode the moment she posted, Ihwa felt a certain pride.
Although all the money came from Hyeonbaragi… She had wanted to at least pay for the lunchboxes, but Hyeonbaragi said he had a place in mind and refused everything.
She felt so proud of her past self who had suggested doing this together. Saved money!
“Chairman. There is no point in looking at it that way. It seems the young master put his name together with hers when sending the gifts so people would not find out he is from Yeonggyeong. He has no contact with that reporter.”
“Is there not even the slightest chance? I would rather it be the reporter. How could we bring a man into the family as a daughter-in-law?”
“Uh… from what I found out, Mr. Gi Cheonghyeon and the young master have not even met. This time too, they did not shop together. The young master bought everything alone at the department store and sent them as gifts. Far from a daughter-in-law, it is the young master who is clinging.”
“What? Ha… leave me. Call Seoan to Pyeongchang-dong sometime next week. I need to hear it straight from his mouth.”
“Cheonghyeon, how is it?”
He was speechless at the sight of the room, which had done a 180 from when he left. When Cheonghyeon blinked and looked around, the manager clasped his hands behind his back with a proud face.
Yunwoo, who came in after, clung to him, saying, “Hyung, how is it? How is it?” It felt a little unreal.
Figures. This morning the manager had insisted there was something he was hiding, forcibly loading him into the car to show him Seoul.
There was a shoot for “Uyounri” scheduled in the afternoon, so he had wanted to sleep in and rest well, but the manager was very persistent.
He whined so much that he finally got in the car, and driving around the city turned out not to be so bad.
Perhaps because he had been a road manager for a long time, the manager knew Seoul’s geography like the back of his hand, and listening to explanations while sightseeing here and there was a pretty good experience.
Then the manager took a call and abruptly headed back to the dorm. With a clumsy line like, “You more or less get Seoul now, right?”
What scheme was this? But when he saw the gifts piled up in his room, he was at a loss for words. The manager shrugged his shoulders as if he himself had prepared it.
“Mm.”
He remembered the room being quite large. Even the bed was covered with gifts.
Drawn as if bewitched, Cheonghyeon quietly approached the pile of presents.
Then he carefully opened one box. Perhaps to prevent injuries while opening, the corners were rounded. His smooth hand made a soft rustling as he peeled back the wrapping.
On each piece of wrapping paper, the fans’ words of support were beautifully printed and hung like little notes. They had lightly written the features of the clothes or suggestions on how to coordinate them.
Leave a Reply